Pause Ahead: hold on, I gotta move3 min read

Anyone who has got internet connection, and presumably a Facebook account, has most likely experienced the world of Casual Flash Games.

Virtual agriculture, sugar demolition, a number of different card games and many, many friend requests.

Here you will never read any of that.

There is more throughout the Web than one might imagine and Casual Games are actually becoming more and more clever and sophisticated, little gems deserving great recognition.

One of them is Pause Ahead, a puzzle platformer from TadakuniAmano, published by Armor Games. Nothing special at first glance, just your classic platform with some dubstep-inspired soundtrack and a mysterious storyline.

Things get more interesting, as usual, after the first few levels, when the main mechanic of the game is finally introduced:

Pausing.

Every time you hit the Pause button, in fact, the character will not stop, but rather keep on moving with constant speed and direction, ignoring all enemies and dangers on his path which will be locked in place.

As the player gets more and more used to this new control scheme, levels start to fill with more and more mean obstacles and new elements are introduced, ramping up the difficulty to the edge of unfairness.

Don’t be naive, in that sense. Pause Ahead is hard. Don’t think you can give it any less than your full attention. One moment of distraction or a less than perfect timing, and you will be back to the start of the level before you can even notice.

The system is simple and elegant enough to allow for a large number of variations, and even when new elements are introduced, they enrich the gameplay without harming the experience.

But we know, nothing is perfect and this title is no exception.

The high difficulty level can be excessively frustrating for people not used to this level of movement precision, and the temptation of throwing the towel can arise way before you are even halfway through the game. We must mention, though, that the character is very well responsive and you never feel let down by the controls.

Even art- and design-wise, you can see some flaws. The animation that plays at the end of each level, for instance, doesn’t seem to have a real purpose, and feels like it has been implemented just because of the author’s taste or maybe as a tech showcase. Surely, it would have been way more effective in a different kind of title.

What’s more, the last level introduces out of the blue a change of setting, mechanics and pace which confuses the player and does not leave him time to cope, if not after multiple tries.

Anyway these flaws are not enough to out-shadow the qualities of this game.

Last note of merit, the soundtrack is very catchy and well produced. Some might say the tecno outline inherited from dubstep might be a little out of context, but if nothing else it adds movement to the scenes that are maybe a bit too similar to each other.

I will let you discover the ending by yourself. It is very intriguing and open to different interpretations. Have a go at it the next time you crave for a short challenge, but make sure you can pause everything else.